And if you thought the vile comments from Christians that I reproduced in my last two posts (“A Gallery of Local Hatred and Unreasoned Animosity” and “Unreason Veiled in Sentimentality is No Improvement“) weren’t offensive enough, my brother unfortunately managed to elicit another one.
First, Jess King of somewhere near Lindsey, California said this:
Atheists don’t believe in God. By default they believe in evolution and life just being an ”accident.” So, since they are just basically the same as any other animal (by their own belief system) why should anyone take what they say seriously? Just throw them a banana and tell them be quiet.
Then, when my brother (who goes by the nickname “oneoftheguys”) tried to call him out on his astounding idiocy, Jess King responded:
Atheists have “dehumanized” themselves. I am just acknowledging this simple fact.Yes, civility IS more than not using bad words but atheists, by nature, are not civil nor can they be. They reject God. As it is written, Roman 1:22,23; “Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.” rsv Just as idol worshippers renounced God, pseudo-Scientists (atheists) end up worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. Oneoftheguys, re-humanize yourself and get back to God!
(Emphasis added.)
If you are a Christian and you know Jess King, or if Jess King attends your church, and you fail to do anything about his disgusting dehumanization of other people in his community, simply because they fail to believe in his god, then you are equally despicable. Choosing your religion is fine; using that religion to blatantly and offensively dehumanize others is unacceptable. I am tired of other Christians failing to put these idiots in their place. Telling me that people like Jess King are not “true Christians” does not cut it. They’re reading your Bible; they’re your responsibility.
Peter,
Thank you for calling him out. I love how people hide behind their religion, denying anything in the way of psychological problems (which Mr. King apparently harbors in abundance) and not-so-cleverly project their issues onto others.
Mr. King might make note of the following passage (King James version, of course, since people like him are usually KJVO’s):
1 John 4:20
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
How is that any different than a he’s-not-a-”true”-Christian argument? If the text supports divergent views—and it does—then the text provides no authoritative support for narrowing the range of acceptable behavior one way or the other, to make readers either better or worse.
For matters of conduct, the Bible, in all its diversity, is only useful to point out that bad behavior is not necessarily required. But neither is good behavior, at least to the standards that modern society requires. So textual arguments to compel specific behavior are inherently weak and will rarely prevail unless there is prior agreement on acceptable conduct that originates outside the text.
The Bible text is only good for demonstrating its vast range (which exceeds every branch of Christianity you will ever encounter these days) and highlighting the silliness of pretending that the Bible provides any rigorous limitations on conduct. Making any other arguments about conduct by using the Bible is just participation in the community of belief and one might as well enroll in a school of theology.
So the Christian failure to rein in their own members has nothing to do with their text and everything to do with their outlook, and the misguided belief that good conduct is not defined by anything independent of their scriptures or traditions, that rules for behavior came down from heaven on a golden thread with no relation to material causes or consequences.
In somewhat of a defense of Jess King, he is a convenient foil, and many of his comments are cleverly drawn out of him by those he debates with.
Jess is quite unable to detach himself from his own self-referential world view, even when simple facts are placed in front of him. He is the kind of guy P.Z. Myers and his ilk love to throw before the lions, but I cannot help but feel contrition for how we use him to pull moderate Christians towards our secular ambitions. They may not like us too much, but the mirror Jess King holds up is one they do not like seeing themselves in.
Jess King also allows us to clearly see P.Z. Myers for the cruel manipulator that he is, for P.Z. does it for no other purpose than to promote his own personal agenda. My motivation is to improve my local community in my own (possibly misguided) way. I will, unlike P.Z, face real personal attack and shunning for my actions. I will suffer for my mistakes.
I believe that gives them some legitimacy. I wish Jess’s fellow Christians would make my actions unnecessary, but they appear to lack the independence of action required. It is probably a reflection of the differences in personality that make them Christians and myself an Atheist in the first place.
But as in all things, unpleasant compromises must be made, and in order to communicate the larger point, Jess King must continue to be sacrificed.
But no one should feel very good about it. I know I don’t.
On a lighter, but related note, enjoy this: http://tiny.cc/Di2EH
I don’t really follow your remarks, or see how Myers has anything to do with the problem here. Dehumanizing atheists is despicable, and worse when the Bible provides the excuse. Christians chose the canon and then established the view that it cannot be changed. “Moderate” or not, if they are going to maintain a canonical text that fails to guard against or prevent such terrible views, then they are complicit; recognizing that complicity is one of the reasons I abandoned their ranks. If they want to be “moderate,” then they should moderate their text and clearly dissociate themselves from these jerks. That doesn’t mean they have to be atheists, but it does mean they have to hold a real line against people like Jess King.
“I don’t really follow your remarks, or see how Myers has anything to do with the problem here.”
No, I see you don’t, because you also detach yourself from any real involvement. (Not that I expect your involvement)
Blogging one’s condemnation is the new papal edict. We mock the internet imbeciles, secure in the knowledge their personal circles will never be our personal circles.
Jess King has 2 degrees in Science and cannot follow simple logic or comprehend the most basic of scientific principles.
His religion has rendered him, for lack of a better phrase, the metaphorical village idiot. He gives us all we need to paint religion as ugly.
You ask for Christian outrage, but you point it at the victim, not the aggressor.
However, we dare not attack the more sophisticated religious leaders, who are the real ugliness, for they know our employers, and we all like our six-figure incomes, and all that comes with the privilege that the Jess King’s of the world will never know.
And that is why I bring up P.Z. Myers, the tenured and protected Atheist provocateur-in-chief, who risks nothing, who disdains any contact with those he condemns, who inserts himself unasked into the internal religious squabbles of others, protecting himself with a cult-like following that will quickly and loudly shout down any signs of discontent.
I, as an Atheist, am tired of it.
If you wish to rally the troops to go forth, then aim your attack at the king, not the peasants in the field. Especially if you have no interest in leaving your own castle.
So are you comparing me to Myers, or what? If I express outrage on my own blog (with its stunning readership of about 15 unique viewers daily), I am suddenly in a “castle” and “detached”? And what makes you think I have a six-figure income? (I wish!) You are incredibly presumptuous to say the things you have said, knowing little about me personally.
I don’t know or interact with any “sophisticated religious leaders” or “kings,” but I do know and interact with ordinary people who live in my community. I make no secret of my views, and express them when I see reason to and feel like it, but I would rather approach my daily life as a demonstration that belief in God is unnecessary to live well. (The closest I’ve ever come to “sophisticated religious leaders” are a few long dialogues with some Christian pastors, and I certainly did not shy away from controversy with them. All of them were kind, courteous, and thoughtful, but they ultimately seemed pretty closed-off in their thinking, in part because they are directly drawing a paycheck from the religious institution.)
If you want to argue that the problems of religion are best approached from the top down, then I simply disagree with you. People change their minds on their own. While I have known many people who “deconverted,” I have never known one who did so because it trickled down through any hierarchy. (But if you know someone whose decision to leave religion behind was not deeply personal and not an act in defiance of the authorities under which they operated, then I would like to know more because that would be a new phenomenon to me.) So I approach everything in my life as an opportunity to help promote and spread curiosity and education. My favorite words to hear are, “Oh, I never thought of it that way.” That’s what changes lives and people: recognizing that there are different perspectives.
What does a top-down approach accomplish? Look at what CVAAS and FFRF are doing with the Fresno City Council. That’s fine work, and I applaud them for doing it. But it’s not my work. While I am frustrated and offended by the appearance that the local government believes it operates under the auspices of Jesus Christ, and while I would be happy to see a change, I also think that legal restrictions on sectarian prayers at council sessions will be about as effective in making a real difference as the idea that we can increase tolerance or goodwill in our society by “banning” a list of offensive words (“retard” has made the list now, apparently; glory). So I am content to let others use the top-down approach; I would much rather just enter the world as an atheist, live by example, and exercise my freedom of speech. Maybe someday we will all meet in the middle, surrounded by a more enlightened and civil society. That would be wonderful.
I am not interested in “troops” or “rallying” or “marching orders,” and have no illusions that I have any “following” (“cult-like” or not) or that anyone really cares if I write anything provocative here. I have been writing provocative things on a blog for years, but never to any real effect. I don’t write enough, or work at it enough, to develop a substantial “following.” From what I can tell, based on feedback, the majority of people who read this blog are my own friends and relatives, many of whom disagree with me. (So my blog hardly doubles as “papal edict,” real or imagined.) I’m not “rallying” anybody; I’m just saying what I think, and I think there is nothing remotely acceptable about remarks like the ones from Jess King that I quoted above.
I also think that those remarks should be addressed in two ways: first, by atheists living good and honorable lives (which, as I said above, is the biggest part of what I try to do), and second, by other believers working on their faith community make it more functional. People want to have religious membership, with beliefs both natural and supernatural, which is fine, but when a religion like Christianity has demonstrated that it fails, as an all-encompassing way of life, to produce good, reasonable, and respectable people, then I think Christians ought to be thinking about that, and ways to change it. But I have not yet found any Christians who take that approach. They don’t have to listen to me (because they are not my “troops” and I am not “rallying” them—and I don’t think most of them are listening to me anyway), but I’ll keep saying it.
As to “real involvement,” your remarks are oblique, so I cannot know exactly what you mean. My memberships and participation are connected organically with my social, professional, and educational life, and they seem quite “real” and “involved” to me. I certainly don’t feel like I am confined to a “castle” where I am “detached” or not “involved.”
My position, and my purpose in writing here and elsewhere, is simply to share what I think and to try and persuade others to see things differently. A lot of the time, others end up persuading me to see things differently, which is just as good: that’s the point of discourse. Why you think that puts me into some safe, Ivory Tower kind of position, I do not know. I certainly don’t feel safe or isolated.
Hi Peter,
I followed the link from your brother’s blog and read your post.
First off:
‘My favorite words to hear are, “Oh, I never thought of it that way.”’ I love to hear those words from my own mouth—it means I’m learning something.
Second off: You stated that “Christianity has demonstrated that it fails, as an all-encompassing way of life, to produce good, reasonable, and respectable people,”—-really? Do you mean that in certain cases it has failed? or in many cases it has failed? or in all cases it has failed?
I travelled in Europe during both Reagan’s and Bush’s tenure ( I have family there; my mom comes from Germany). I’d always get the cracks about America and the views of these two leaders whom I didn’t vote for and most often didn’t agree with. I was torn between saying ‘not all Americans are arrogant jerks’ and ‘yeah, there are people like that there’ and ‘I didn’t vote for him’. They coulda said “Yeah, but you’re an American—go straighten those people out”. Or they could’ve said “This shows that democracy (or capitalism) or whatever we blame America’s short comings for—has failed to produce good, reasonable and respectable people.’”——–I could’ve said, “I try to live an honorable life”—-and really, I bet many Christians that I disagree with—and many Americans that I disagree with are trying their best to live an honorable and honest life—–
I’m interested (if my letter’s not too much of a jumble) to hear your thoughts on my little post-ette here.
Hi Blake. Thanks for stopping by.
Regarding: “Christianity has demonstrated that it fails, as an all-encompassing way of life, to produce good, reasonable, and respectable people”
You have a good point. I could have worded that better. The problem appears to arise mainly from the word “produce,” which I meant in a functional, causal way—in the sense that an experiment run twice with the same parameters will produce the same result (or the second one will reproduce the result of the first).
Let me try again:
Christianity has demonstrated that it does not invariably produce good, reasonable, and respectable people. That is, Christianity fails as a method to produce good, reasonable, and respectable people, in the same way that homeopathy fails as a method to cure disease. If Christianity is supposed to produce good people, then it fails: that some Christians are good and others are not is evidence that whatever Christianity does, making good people is not it.
Many Christians appear to admit as much, for example by putting the waggish bumper sticker on their car: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven!” Well, okay then. Nobody expects you to be perfect. (The occasional logician in me wants to shout, “False dichotomy!”)
But Christians can’t eat the cake and keep it, too. If Christianity offers any kind of moral authority, then its adherents should be evidence of the morality offered. Since, in the aggregate, they present what appears, in my experience, to be a fairly complete cross-section of humanity, instead of a group with moral character that is markedly greater than that of the general population, the claim to moral authority fails.
So again, if Christianity does anything, producing good, reasonable, and respectable people is not it—in the sense that the good, reasonable, and respectable people within its ranks probably would have been good, reasonable, and respectable anyway.
Nicely stated.
One problem (or is it?): How do we know if Christians that *did* turn out ok (haha)—- would’ve still without the influence of their beliefs?
You can’t A/B test an individual on this.
another problem might be:
A lot of people claim to have been in pretty bad shape and then they ‘found Christ’. Of course, some people might claim that they were in bad shape and then they accepted that there was no God….
and—why can’t I keep the cake? I like cake.
It’s a causation problem.
If Christianity claims to make good people, but not all Christians are good, then:
(a) Christianity fails as a method for producing good people because the results are not uniform; or
(b) the good people who are Christians would have been good anyway.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Christianity to make some people better than they otherwise would have been. It just means (a) that Christianity will not work on everyone and (b) even when it appears to work, other factors may have been more important. Which is just another way of saying that the causal link between Christianity and moral character is broken.
But Christianity is a vast and muddled phenomenon. There could be elements of Christianity that do actually work, but Christians have not demonstrated a desire to critically examine their religion and determine what ought to be kept and what ought to be discarded based on what actually works. Instead, the schisms have been over theological matters, or the desire to escape from economically oppressive hierarchies. The history of Christianity does not show a desire to systematically determine how to actually improve lives; rather it shows a continuing desire to establish ecclesiastical authority and theological purity.
Christians (at least all the ones I’ve encountered) prioritize theological commitments over real benefits to the world. If something will benefit the world, but conflicts with a theological commitment, they will either favor the theological commitment, or change the content of the theological commitment so they are allowed to do what they know is better. That’s ridiculous. There’s no point in getting theological commitments involved when that’s the state of things: why not just make the reasoned, considered decision that you would have made without warping the pre-existing theological commitment to suit your needs? But the fact that the theological commitment must be maintained, one way or another, demonstrates its priority in the Christian mind.
And, as I have argued elsewhere, even when Christians are making reasoned, considered decisions to improve the world, the conspicuous priority of those theological commitments promotes theological commitment in general, even where people are not making reasoned, considered decisions. They perpetuate the idea that there is some virtue in maintaining theological commitments, even to people who are not as “liberal” about modifying them to suit changed circumstances. That, in my opinion, is harmful to everyone.
I’m gonna chew on those last coupla paragraphs for a while!
I’m also not sure I’ll swallow your a) and b)——even as a logical conclusion. (I’m not dismissing them or even ‘dissing’ them….just need to think about it for a while). But I do thank you for taking my post seriously and for bouncing it around in a way that welcomes discussion.
I’m off to the Rogue Festival and to ponder my theological priorities.
cheers!
–Blake
Hiya Peter,
Ok, so I’ve thought a little bit .
Here’s what I’ve come up with.
A whole lot of your points are right on the mark:
Christians, when ‘reforming’ *are* more preoccupied with doctrinal purity than fixing their methods of forming better people.
This, though, should not be a surprise. Put yourself in their shoes—they believe in a revelation of God (through Christ, or through the Bible or through the Spirit dwelling within)…..of course, understanding all that, especially if they believed The Bible as an inerrant book (of the three methods of revelation, that would be the easiest to take out, poke around and argue about), they’d be all about trying to make sure people understood it correctly. [Personally, I'm not sure I fully trust the 'inerrancy' of human translators, understanders, editors-of-the-last-millinea or whatever...but don't spread that around, I might miss out on the next church potluck (haha)].
Ok, back to the ‘making people nicer/better/more moral’——I don’t believe that’s exactly what Christianity is about…but I’ll get back to that.
I’m now referring to your ‘a’ and ‘b’ style conclusions in your posting just prior to mine.
First of all…can we really test whether, in general, Christianity has made individuals or societies ‘better/nicer/more moral’? I mean…to A/B test them…wouldn’t you need some alternate universe where Christianity never appeared?
And on the individual level….who’s to say that even the nastiest, most belligerent person self-identifying as a Christian wouldn’t have been even nastier without Christianity?
Ok, I’m sure there’s plenty to play with just in what I’ve typed so far….but—–I think Christianity, though maybe making us more Christ-like (as in selfless/loving) might be the ultimate goal God has for us—-I think the ‘gospel’[the 'good news'] is all about God, the Creator/the source of life/the source of love, wishing us to re-connect with Him.
That’s the crux of Christianity ( I think).
Yes, I do conceede that if two people discuss these issues: one having a belief in the Judeo/Christian God and one believing that said God is an non-truth—there *will* be some awfully difficult hurdles—–but if one puts oneself in the other’s shoes, it might become clear as to *why* the other thinks that way.
Yes, we can test that by comparing what Christians claim their religion should do with what their religion actually does. As I wrote above, “If Christianity is supposed to produce good people, then it fails: that some Christians are good and others are not is evidence that whatever Christianity does, making good people is not it.”
But I have never heard any Christian seriously claim that practicing their religion is just supposed to make people less bad, without actually making them better. Even assuming my memory is inaccurate, however, if the best Christianity can hope to do is make really bad people merely bad, then what good is that? Supporting Christianity would be like throwing good money after not-as-bad-as-you-thought-but-still-bad money.
And that half-ass version of Christianity hardly sounds like the kind of group that really does have some truth about ultimate matters like the alleged creator of the universe, and so on.
But if Christianity is supposed to provide a way for individuals to “re-connect” with “God, the Creator/the source of life/the source of love,” then what should the result of that look like? Shouldn’t someone who is “connected” with the “source of life” or “the source of love” be the most amazing person around? To be quite honest with you, I have not yet met a Christian who gave me the impression they were “connected” with the “source” of anything. Even the best, nicest Christians really just seem like they are trying very hard to keep themselves from being jerks. They don’t exude the kind of stability and peace that I would expect from someone who is “connected” with the ultimate. They all—every last one of them—seem like people who are stretched too far, trying too hard to pretend they have achieved some kind of enlightenment. There always seems to be some roiling undercurrent threatening to destroy their whole “Christian” persona, something they are constantly fighting. It distracts them and keeps them from engaging the world fully.
Peter! I really hope someday to have a spirited conversation with you in person. You bring up really great points. I’m not sure how far I can go, how much I can type, before I get to be more of a pain than a welcome guest. I’d like to remain the latter.
My first thoughts are:
* I’m not sure Christianity *does* claim to make better people.
(as you mentioned earlier, “Christianity” is a very muddled affair made up of individuals, political entities past and present, and people of some fairly varying views…..some of the ‘core’ and ‘most shared’ beliefs are written down in some of the ‘creeds’, but I expect you already know all about those.)
*On being hooked up to the Creator not making the difference you’d expect. —I’ll go along with you on this one (with some qualifications)…..as a musician and as a person who’s grown up in churches, I can tell you, there has been pressure put on me to play “Christian Music”(big giant quotes)…..and when you hear the crap (mostly) on the “Christian Radio Stations”(more big quotes) you do wonder which ‘source’ they are hooked up to.
I can only point to J.S. Bach….but dang, that was what…around 3 hundred years ago?
I do hope we hook up for some fun conversation in the future and in person.
—Blake
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